What I’ve learned about writers’ conferences can be boiled down to the simple principle of: expect nothing, be curious, and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised. At least in my case, what ends up happening is rarely what I planned for. I personally think there’s a Chaos Fairy assigned to writers’ events.

Once, when I was in the planning stages of going to WorldCon, I joked with my to-be-roommate about the cost of renting a suite instead of the standard double-double—the difference in this particular hotel was so outrageous, we surmised the suite’s bathroom must have gold-plated taps. Then, when the time came to check in, there was a room screw-up and no place to stay. We protested vigorously at the reception desk, and finally were given a partial suite at a bargain-basement price. Yup, it had gold taps. The poor porter must have wondered why we were laughing so hard. I spent most of the conference writing in the room, with its full dining area, living room and two elegantly-appointed bathrooms, because it was just so darned nice. Dream—or at least joke—come true! On the other hand, most of the writers I had gone to see never showed up. Win some, lose some.

Maybe I appreciate the random quality of these events because my life is usually overbooked. Sure, conferences have schedules, but after a few years the listed offerings pale beside the impromptu sideshows. I don’t need another seminar to inform me that I need a web page. What I need is a shake-up. Something surprising.

I certainly got surprises during the Orlando conference. For one thing, the blue, hot, steamy Florida atmosphere is the polar opposite of what I’m used to. It was green and beautiful, but a sauna. It forced me to stop racing around at my usual pace—and that’s not a bad thing. Besides all that:

• I met readers! Bless you for coming out to the signing! I was thrilled.
• For the first time ever, I met my editor and she fed a flock of her authors a very fine meal indeed.
• I had a fancy purple cocktail that tasted like cough syrup, but it was very pretty to look at.
• I danced, much to my surprise. Probably had something to do with that martini.
• One of my roommates, Jacqui Nelson, won a Golden Heart award for her unpublished manuscript. You go, girl!
• I met tons of people, including a first face-to-face with Jessa and Kim.
Plus, I got all the usual mixed messages about the future of the publishing industry. It’s heaven! It’s hell! It’s dead! It’s alive! It’s Undead! It’s zombified! Call an exorcist!
Pass the purple martinis 😯

If you want to write romance, I’d definitely recommend the RWA National Conference experience. It has tons of information available—but not all of the valuable stuff is in the seminars. Wear comfy shoes and go for the adventure. At the very least, there’s a book’s-worth of characters to encounter.

Okay, so I’m not much of a shutterbug, but I did remember to take my camera to the RWA Conference that just wrapped up in Orlando. The conference hotel was the Swan and Dolphin at Disneyworld. I got out one day for a walk of about an hour or so, but after that I didn’t have much time for exploring. Plus it was hot and muggy in a way those of us from the Pacific Northwest just aren’t used to! Every time I walked out of the hotel, my glasses steamed up. One time, I was carrying a paperback and by the time I crossed the courtyard, the cover was slippery with moisture.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

bridge and waterway between the Dolphin and Swan hotels

Fountain outside the Dolphin hotel

I think these fish are meant to look like the Baroque cartographer’s view of dolphins. Either that, or the designers needed a zoological lesson.

Shipwreck and beach at Disneyworld

Sadly, no Captain Jack Sparrow sunning himself.

The Boardwalk and faux historical buildings

Not surprisingly, there was a certain cartoon-like quality to all the architecture.

Palm trees

Okay, so I hadn’t seen palm trees that tall before. We do have a few palm trees where I live, but they’re short and stumpy.

Boat that toured the waterway

This was a cool innovation – this boat toured the major sites accessible by water. It wasn’t speedy, but the trip was beautiful.

I don’t watch reality TV. Well, that’s not strictly true. When I’m trapped on the treadmill at the gym, it’s often on the wide-screens at the front. Watching it takes my mind off the fact that I’m (gasp) exercising, and I’m quite grateful for the distraction from my grumbling muscles.

One can’t help but wonder how contestants blunder onto these shows—many of them seem lambs lost in the woods of desperate circumstances. People unable to choose their wedding dress. Wedding planners leaping into the breach to save the day because someone fell into the cake. Nasty, knife-wielding chefs shrieking at their minions. People weeping as they do 3,185 push ups with a trainer ranting at them for eating a single chocolate covered almond. No, I’m not kidding. Who comes up with this stuff? I believe it was the philosopher Thomas Hobbes who declared life to be short, nasty and brutish. These shows confirm all that and add “ridiculous” to the list.

So why do we watch them? I’m not sure, but as I trot on the high-tech hamster wheel (speaking of ridiculous), I’m utterly absorbed. Completely. Mesmerized. Some folks say it’s like watching a train wreck—it’s pure schadenfreude and we’re thankful it’s not us bawling all over national TV.

That may be true, but there’s also a huge yearning on the viewer’s part for triumph. We want the wedding to succeed; we need the heroes to stay on the island and the villains to go home in disgrace. Reality TV is packed with morality tales boiled down into their raw components, and a basic part of us is anxious to see them played out. Joseph Campbell would have had a field day with this stuff–forget the hero’s journey, this material is cutting to the chase in quick and uncomplicated sound bites.

Reality shows remind me of the medieval Everyman plays: Average Joe makes his way past the Seven Deadly Sins (substitute with challenges of your choice) to the pearly gates, succeeding because his faith is sound. Average Joe discovers worldly friends and favour melt away when Death (or the Bachelorette) arrives to test him. Only his Good Deeds remains to plead his case (bag the rose). Etcetera. Play the story out on a medieval fairground or the TV, the plot is pretty much the same.

Times change, but the trials of the human heart and soul still hold fundamental fascination. We still value honesty, optimism, and a protagonist who can stick it to the Devil—especially if he’s disguised as a celebrity chef.

Makes sense to me. Or maybe it’s just exhaustion 45 minutes into my workout. Speaking of the devil, could this treadmill possibly be purgatory?

Embarrassment is a matter of perspective; I would almost say it is the province of the young, who do not yet understand the value of being ridiculous. Once you’ve worn sparkly silver platform heels, there’s not much else that life can throw at you. You’re officially a survivor.

When I look back at what was cool in my high school years, I find, oddly, it’s back on TV. Ozzy Osborne and Gene Simmons are reprising their roles as cultural icons in ways I would never have anticipated at sixteen. I think even then I would have had a sneaking admiration for their tenacity.

What was the young Sharon Ashwood devoted to in her teens? Glam rock, the more glittery the better. Alice Cooper had already (apocryphally) bitten the heads off chickens and David Bowie had already fallen to earth, but a secondary wave of costumed curiosities was strutting into suburban living rooms. On vinyl, of course. This was the dark ages.

KISS and Queen were my obvious choices because I’d grown up on comic books and live theatre. The sheer, unapologetic in-your-face of it all blew me away. It was a synthesis of a lot of my fixations.

As far as the actual music went, it was interesting times. Punk was just losing its bleeding edge. New Wave was still, well, new and occupying one or two New York nightclubs. Bands toured with convoys of sets and personnel because gas was relatively cheap and the carbon footprint wasn’t an issue. Green was still the colour of your face the morning after the night before. News of one’s rock idol doings came monthly from Creem Magazine and the Rolling Stone. It would still be another ten or fifteen years before the music industry crashed beneath the Napster bulldozer. This was the era when you’d stay glued to a.m. radio all Saturday afternoon to find out if Your Song had made it to the pinnacle of the Top 40 Countdown.

Fun times, and it’s refreshing that some of the spandex gods of those days are still around and still going strong. As for the reality TV appearances, I largely ignore the whole thing. Glam rock was always tongue in cheek—this is just more of the same. Embarrassing? Only if you have a sense of shame.

Yup, we will rock you—as soon as we can lever ourselves out of the La-Z-Boy.

A lot of good TV shows have come and gone, but sometimes I wonder if I miss the show itself or the circumstances around watching it. I used to watch a TV show about the Vikings Sunday afternoons when I was in university. It was a great show on history and archaeology, but I think the real pleasure came out of the fact that by the time it came on, my weekend homework was usually finished. It was the signal to start my night off. I can say similar things about a lot of the British cop shows that were around in the 1980s, because I used to watch them with my Dad. I miss the shows, but I what I really miss is spending time with him.

All that being said, there are some shows I miss because of their pure genius. My two all-time favourites are Babylon 5 and Buffy/Angel. Both were clever and beautifully crafted. Bab 5 was more complex and sometimes struggled with all that creative brilliance (+/ the network execs who simply didn’t get it) but will remain on my keeper shelf always. There is something of a Shakespearean grandeur there. Plus, the Vorlons were just so cool.

I have to point to it as a real influence on how I think about story construction. The plot layering is without peer. If you watch it from the beginning, there isn’t a throw away scene in the entire series. (Watch out for Mr. Morden). Everything counts, even if it doesn’t become apparent until the next season–or even several seasons later.

Both B5 and Buffy ran their course. Angel ended in a rather spectacular, dystopian fashion I love or hate depending on my mood, but at least it ended. What bugs me far more are all the shows that died on vine before they had a chance to reach their full potential. Firefly (see Jessa’s post) is a great example—I will never understand why that one didn’t flourish.

Others committed the sin of stumbling at the starting gate, but given time could have grown into their promise. Moonlight was just starting to hit its groove after a somewhat wan beginning (Vampire Mick needed assertiveness training). Blood Ties started out well but the writing faltered, probably once they figured out they were destined for cancellation. Defying Gravity was definitely interesting, but I think the threads of the story needed to be pulled together sooner. I loved the Dollhouse, but it was too abstract for a lot of people. It took some time to understand what was going on.

Which leads me to think that, while it’s tough enough to get a book series off the ground, there is zero tolerance for any missteps while launching a new TV show. Viewers—or maybe it’s advertisers?—don’t wait around for slow but steady growth. It’s either an instant, or it’s gone.

It makes me cautious about becoming attached to a new series too soon. Does the high rate of cancellation make anyone else reluctant to try new shows?

This is undoubtedly most relevant to Floridians and those attending the RWA National Conference, but here is the scoop on the big signing event–and I’ll be there! From the RWA web site:

“The 2010 “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing takes place on Wednesday, July 28, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Walt Disney World® Dolphin Resort, Pacific Exhibit Hall, in Orlando, Florida. This event is open to the public; there is no admittance charge.”

My family was never big on vacations. They were busy and didn’t have a lot of spare money, so travel fell to the bottom of the priority pile and, when it did happen, was often accomplished by bus. Sometimes at seventy-two hour stretches. I get bus sick. I developed an early aversion to travel.

When I was one my own (and possessed a car) prospects improved. True, I took the “dream” vacation with the boyfriend of the day (vile mistake, but good diagnostic tool for future un/happiness), but that’s not the main reason I find travel stressful. Wherever I went for many years, there was usually a disaster of some sort. Bombing. Snipers. Flood. Riots. I was just about to start blackmailing tourist spots so they’d pay me to stay home, but that era appears to have ended with my trek to San Francisco a few years ago. It was AOK, which must have signalled the lifting of the curse. Though there was that flood in Nashville right after I reserved my hotel for the RWA National conference this summer. That’s just a coincidence, right?

Yes, it’s possible that I do read too much paranormal fiction. On the other hand, perhaps I will never take a “normal” vacation, because my perception is different.

Travel is too important to an author for me to hide on my safe little island. My two trips to England (one plagued by the IRA, the other by poll tax riots, mad cow disease, and a storm that washed out the bridge to Wales) have provided a wealth of historical imagery. All of those ghastly bus rides as a kid showed me the prairies in a way an airplane just can’t (there is a giant bronze Viking AND a giant corn cob somewhere in Minnesota). And there’s nothing like waking up to your first up-close view of the northern Rocky Mountains at sunrise. The imagery, down to every last bus stop and greasy spoon, is stored in my mental treasure room. I found seeds of stories in all of those places. (And sitting on my grandma’s porch watching the creek waters creep across the lawn toward me, half-distracted by the itch-worthy fact that I’d stupidly moved straw bales all afternoon wearing shorts and a midriff).

Authors aren’t all that different from those wildly irritating tourists who snap pictures and videos every three steps. You know the ones I mean—those people who seem to experience more with the camera lens than with their eyeballs. Storytellers are also recording every last detail for future use, even if we’re not conscious of it at the time.

So the book is out from under my control, free to roam the universe. But am I unchained from Unchained? One of the hardest things about book releases is the knowledge that you can’t take anything back. You’ve done it. You’ve said that. No more access to the delete key.

I had someone ask recently if there was anything I’d do differently. At this point, it’s useless to look back over my shoulder, and even if I could I wouldn’t want to. Yes, every author would like a whole lot more pages to unfurl their fabulous ideas, and more time to hone the manuscript would always be welcome–but there comes a time when you have to declare your work perfect. It’s as much a living organism as a child, and it is what it is, unique and special.

And honestly, I’m pretty darned pleased with how Unchained turned out. It gets the Angst Award among the Dark Forgotten novels to date. There’s no rest for these two characters.

So, go forth, little book and be free. It’s not a separation, just the natural evolution of becoming a grown-up book.

I’m sure I’ll be hearing from Ashe and Reynard when they need someone to do their laundry.